24 September 2015

How to Avoid Hiring $15/hr Schlubbs Mandated by Neo-Marxist City Councils

This fast-food minimum wage campaign has the potential

to go down as an all-time EPIC bonehead move by the left-

what if it makes clear economic sense to replace

workers with automation at $7/hr, too?

Sure, McDonalds sees the writing-on-the-wall, and has the financial war chest to deal with it. They've already opened a fully robotic Mickey D's in Phoenix, with plans to roll-out 25,000 more by just next year...But what about the little guy?

The legislation recently seen in New York, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle inflicts large minimum wage increases on restaurants employing more than 30-or-so people- but that could easily mean a lot of family owned business, particularly those with more than one location.And anybody who's ever spent any time in LA can tell you much of the fast food comes from small business owners, the ubiquitous burger and burrito stands, lunch trucks, etc, Quick meals are a huge business in SoCal, but it's not just the national chains -although their presence is substantial- there's a lot of these businesses plus some medium chains unique to the west coast that are legendary (Tommy's, In-and-Out, Carl's Junior, Jack in the Box). But the small-to-medium outfits will be at a substantial financial disadvantage if they can't match McDonalds' mega-deep-pocketed automation drive- $15/hr will kill them, not to mention competion from myriad micro-businesses that employ friends/relatives (kids, for free) and/or hire far less than 30 people (on the books), if anybody.The problem with these heavy socialist moves -like (easy to evade) soak-the-rich taxation attempts- is that it really isn't that difficult for thinking people to avoid hiring lazy, overpriced workers that aren't worth what you're paying them... and it doesn't take a $5M robotic restaurant to do it. Once the automation industry gets established, these vital (to our economy and society) entry-level jobs -which many of us had for our first employment ever, teaching us how the world worked at 16, 17 years old (as in my own case)- might pretty much disappear from coast-to-coast...how progressive!See, businessmen with a successful operation didn't get that way by being stupid -a luxury somebody like John Kerry can enjoy, he married his money (and as a Dem, doesn't have to answer for serial ineptitude)... wily entrepreneurs always find a way to end-run unjust ruling class attempts to bleed them.

Smaller shops/chains can simply contract-out a lot of the work their people used to do, even some food prep (or purchase prepared food service items), so no prep cook anymore. You can hire an outfit to clean the parking lot and windows, and the cleaning company's own crew comes into the kitchen at night.Good waitresses -if required- already make $15/hr from tips, so perhaps hiring a full staff there isn't a problem. And for that kind of money, they can bus their own tables.

I might pay fifteen bucks for a good front-end manager plus one quality cook in the back, but they'll have to bring me high-productivity with an advanced, semi-automated one-man kitchen. You can run almost anything with 2-3 people now, really.The front counter kids aren't needed anymore- touch screen ordering systems are becoming quite commonplace now, and the price is surely coming down, like all tech. There's nothing particularly advanced or complex about them. A smartphone app taking orders is available for all shops, there's another counter person made redundant.

And have you ever seen the conveyor belt running around a sushi joint, with the plates you just pick yourself, then bring your plate to the tray cart and pay the cashier at the end (by color of plates)? No waitresses, no bus boys at all... just a cashier, really.

Almost any fast food business could get by with 30% of the staff they've got now- outsourcing, some automation, and a thorough re-think of the operation can easily produce a new type of shop that doesn't need ten dummies milling around, looking confused all the time... not for a bloated $15/hr minimum wage, they don't.Look at the typical lunch truck or Manhattan street cart- they serve almost anything off of a roach coach these days, and they do it all with 1-2 people, everything needed is right at hand... and that's with little automation.

The organization of small-medium fast food shops will quickly evolve to wring-out all the employees not worth $15/hr... and that's most of them.

It's like Art Laffer said- they ought to call any minimum wage legislation 'The Black Youth Unemployment Act', because that's who's going to be screwed out of a job -by the thousands- in all of the major US cities suffering under ill-advised economic meddling (by people who have zero idea what they're doing).In a sane world you'd expect a massive backlash pending against those who cost them their jobs... but these 'progressive' city councils will surely blame the evil capitalists for wanting to continue to exist. I suspect they'll then resort to boycotts next (and lazy people on welfare eat a lot of fast food!).Reagan famously said "Entrepreneurs and small businesses are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States". Amazingly, the left has managed not only to destroy that sort of hiring, but has doomed the future of these entry-level jobs entirely- most fast food positions are as good as gone already.

1984 campaign poster

Korean DMZ, 1983

1980 campaign poster

Reagan Presidential Library:

1984 Reagan landslide

London, 1983

Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan CVN-76

Quoth the Gipper...

"Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid"

"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us... Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business."

"We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent"

"Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the ability to manage conflict by peaceful means"

"Of the four wars of my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong"

"If the Soviet Union ever let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state... because everybody would join the other party"

"How do you tell a communist? He reads Lenin and Marx. And how do you tell an anti-communist? Someone who understands Lenin and Marx."

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction; it's not something we pass along in our bloodstream. It must be fought-for, protected, and passed-along for them to do the same"

"Entrepreneurs and small businesses are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States"

"If you can't make them see the light, let them feel the heat"

"They say the world has become too complex for simple answers... they are wrong"

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"

"Recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours"

"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement..."